Claire arrived at The Glass Bottom Boat for the film club meeting the following Tuesday feeling more than a little flustered. She was running out of clothes and she knew that she’d have to sneak back to her flat very soon.
She thought, come Monday morning, she’d be ready to go home. But she hadn’t been ready. She hadn’t been ready at all. Just the thought of seeing his face again made her want to shout and scream and cry. It was most unsettling. She really needed to get herself under control.
Peggy’s flatmate had arrived back on Monday afternoon too, so Claire had packed her bag and turned up at Maggs’s house. Maggs had taken one look at her, given her a fierce hug and had marched her up to her spare room. Claire had never been so pleased to see eighties striped wallpaper, a dado border and frilly peach pillowcases in her life.
If only she knew what his schedule was. If he’d had a proper job she’d have known she was safe during office hours, but of course he didn’t have a proper job, which just meant she really knew how to pick ‘em.
But what about the documentary? a little voice inside her head whispered. The one that was deep and sensitive and made you cry.
Shut up, she told herself. She didn’t want to think about that documentary. As far as she was concerned, it had been made by someone else. And that wasn’t the point anyway. The point was that she didn’t want all the awkwardness, all the drama, of bumping into him unexpectedly. It would be much better if she could pretend he didn’t exist at all.
She parked her car and she and Maggs got out. It was only as she neared the entrance to the pub that she looked up.
She saw him standing there and a sensation rather like lightning shot through her. Not the nice kind of lightning, with a crackle of attraction, but the horrible kind, which made you feel hot and cold all at once and fried your brain cells so that grunting monosyllables became an effort. In fact, that was just what Claire did.
‘Wh—Buh—Yuh—’ was all she managed. Even she didn’t know what she was trying to say. This was exactly why she hadn’t wanted to bump into him unprepared.
He fixed her with those big, brown puppy-dog eyes. ‘I know you don’t want to see me,’ he said softly.
Claire nodded, her jaw tense, her lips pursed. Part of her was really glad he knew what she was thinking so she didn’t have to try to say it herself, another was insanely cross with him that he could read her so well.
‘But if you’d just let me explain …’
She shook her head, the movements tiny and staccato, and then she closed her eyes so she couldn’t see him, turned to face where she hoped the door of the pub was, opened them again and marched away towards the staircase out the back of the lounge bar. She could hear him calling after her, even crashing through the crowd a little behind her, but she screened those noises out, heard them, but filed them in a corner of her brain marked ‘not important’, and somehow it worked. Somehow, when she got to the top of the stairs and let herself into the function room, she was felt as if she was gliding above it all, like a swan across a millpond.
Maggs appeared a few moments later, puffing. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to give him a chance to talk?’
Claire just carried on unloading this week’s DVD selection from her bag. Calamity Jane. One of her favourites. Well, nearly everyone’s favourite, as it turned out. The club had been unanimous in choosing it for their next screening.
She was saved from Maggs nagging her further by the arrival Kitty and Grace, who had Abby in tow, and then George came in, his eyes searching the room for Maggs then coming to rest on her. Claire sighed. When was Maggs going to put the old boy out of his misery? Claire had fulfilled her part of the bargain. It was high time Maggs lived up to hers.
Still, there’d be time after the film to talk about that. The rest of the club members arrived and after a short discussion on the next four films that should be shown during their Doris film season they settled down to watch Calamity Jane.
Usually, Claire could sing along with every song – inside her head, of course; she wouldn’t want to inflict her singing on her fellow club members – but this evening she kept drifting off, unable to settle and pay attention. She sighed. She normally loved this story of a woman and two men, only the right guy turned out to the wrong guy and the wrong guy turned out to be Mr Right. Maybe it was because, up until the other night, she thought she’d had a Mr Right and a Mr Wrong in her life, but now they’d inconveniently merged into the same person. Somehow that took the shine off the story.
Real life wasn’t like that. All it took was one kiss for ‘Calam’ and Bill to wipe away every bit of animosity from the past and start planning a future together. That was hardly going to happen to her. Even if Dominic – yes, she was using his proper name now – was pretty good in that department, it would have to be a kiss that reached the equivalent of number ten on the Richter scale to dislodge all the baggage they’d got going. And she didn’t want to kiss him again anyway. So there.
Still, she wished she really was more like Calamity Jane. Brave. Tough. Ready to face arrows and Indians and ridicule to get what she wanted. So instead of feeling buoyed up as she usually did after seeing the film, she left the meeting feeling deflated, as if she’d held herself up to an idea and come up lacking. All in all, she felt more like poor fake Katie than Calamity.
She was still mulling that over when she tramped down the stairs to the ground floor of the pub. She looked up as she hit the bottom step. Big mistake.
‘Seriously?’ she said, forgetting she was supposed to be ignoring him. ‘Have you been waiting here all evening?’
Dominic gave a very determined nod. ‘Yes. Because I need to explain, and you need to listen.’
Claire gave him a tight smile. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Mr Arden. I don’t need to do anything some man tells me. So, if you’ll excuse me?’
She moved to go past him. He didn’t stop her. But he did follow her as she made her way through the pub.
‘Well, if you won’t listen to an explanation, at least listen to this: there’s no reason for you to stay away from the flat. I’ve moved out.’
Claire stopped, but didn’t turn round.
His voice came closer when he spoke again and she could tell he was standing right behind her. ‘I’m staying with Pete at the moment and after that … Well, I can always rent it out, find something else for myself. I’m hardly there much of the time as it is anyway.’
Claire straightened and started moving again. ‘Do what you want,’ she said. ‘It has no effect on me either way.’
He didn’t follow her this time. Claire knew. Not because she glanced over her shoulder to look, but because the air at her back grew colder and colder the further she walked away from him.
Good riddance, she thought to herself as she headed to her car. The sooner he vacated his flat the better, then she’d never have to think of him again.